New International Economic Order

NEW OPEN ACCESS BOOK: Sixty years after independence, Africa and international law: Views from a generation / Soixante ans apres les independances, l’Afrique et le droit international: Regards d’une generation, Apollin Koagne Zouapet (Ed), PULP 2023

This book emerged from the observation that in international law scholarship, few studies have been done on Africa as both object and subject of international law despite the involvement of African states and Africans in the international arena and their active participation in many debates. To fill this gap by examining, sixty years after the independence of African states, the place of Africa in international law and the way international law looks at Africa is the challenge that the contributors to this book, all internationalists of the 1980-1990 generation, have taken up. The book highlights the specificity of a particular African law and examines the African experience in this fi eld from an international law perspective.

Book Review of International Investment Law: National, Regional and Global Perspectives, Collins C Ajibo, (Wolf Legal Publishers 2020)

As the author explains in the foreword, this book intends to explore the principles, policies and practice in international investment law across the world and to foster greater study interests of students in the field. Unlike other textbooks that focus solely on investment protection in international law, this book brings an under-explored perspective from developing countries, in particular from Nigeria.

Afronomicslaw Call for Blogs: African-Asian Relations: Fostering Trade and Investment in Times of Crisis

A core legacy of the New International Economic Order of the 1970s is the rise of the South-South economic cooperation. Since 1980, trade and investment relations between African and Asian states have been growing ever closer. Indeed, the unique ways in which African-Asian economic cooperation manifests has been a defining feature of Africa’s international economic relations since the end of decolonization.

ISDS Reform and the Problems of Imagining Our Future

At the heart of African decolonization was radical political thinking about international non-domination, and the vision of an international legal, political and economic order that secured this anti-imperialism through global redistribution. This idea of the world, that involved radical reinterpretation of the principle of self-determination, united the political thinking of the tallest leaders of Africa – Azikiwe, Nkrumah, Nyerere, and others.

A Tale of the Tended Garden: AfCFTA’s Nudge to Look Inward

On March 9 2018, the African Union Ministers of Trade approved the Declaration establishing the Agreement establishing African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement (AfCFTA); a move that marked the creation of the largest Free Trade Area in the World. The Agreement seeks to create a single market for goods, services and movement of persons and investment among African countries thereby fostering intra-African trade, facilitating structural transformation of African economies and promoting sustainable and inclusive socio-economic development across the African continent. Whether this would turn out to be a significant positive development within the continent may largely depend on whether the broader issue is addressed- The continuous inclination of African States to explore the forest rather than tend the garden.

World Environment Day 2020: A Brief Reflection on International Economic and International Environmental Law From A TWAIL/Global South Perspective

Finally, we have seen a surge in climate activism, especially from children and young adults, especially after Greta Thunberg launched the Fridays for Future (FFF) Movement in August 2018. FFF is a global movement that seeks to ‘put moral pressure on policymakers, to make them listen to the scientists, and then to take forceful action to limit global warming.’

Pandemic, Solidarity and the Foundations of International Law

International law constructed along the voluntarist orthodoxy doesn’t help in the time of pandemic. It leaves the poorer at the good will of the mighty, for it largely ignores the actual power relations between states. The inter-state deals struck “voluntarily” and the policy choices thus fixed reflect the bargaining power of the States. This being the case, the international law is likely to reinforce and perpetuate inequalities, rather than being a check against the use of political power. As the post-corona crisis is likely to strike the poorest nations hardest, the bright future for some may mean dim prospects for others.

Covid-19 and South-South Trade & Investment Cooperation: Three Emerging Narratives

To the extent that measures taken to combat Covid-19 intersect with existing trade and investment obligations for countries in the global south, and reveals the embedded tensions,  we wonder whether regional governance can or should serve as a framework to create equitable and just South-South cooperation, especially in times of crises. Regional and sub-regional organisations, if operationalised effectively, have the capabilities to pool together the financial, human, and intellectual resources that will be needed to identify interventions and responses to measures that threaten the foundations of solidarity, self-reliance and equality underpinning South-South relations.